'Dolores' documentary portrays labor activist

Friday

Oct 6, 2017 at 12:01 AMOct 8, 2017 at 1:37 PM

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Back in the early 1960s, the thought was the only union a woman belonged in was marriage. Lucky for thousands of farm workers, Dolores Huerta never got that message. She married, all right, but she was never June Cleaver. Instead of vacuuming in pearls and heels, she rolled up her sleeves and joined Cesar Chavez in starting a movement that in the words of her close friend Gloria Steinem exposed the dirty secrets of what was going on in the fields of America.

If you say to yourself, “Dolores Huerta? I’ve never heard of her,” you’re not alone. And the reason you haven’t is because there’s been a concerted effort to erase her from the history books, a racially motivated slight the fascinating documentary “Dolores” determinedly seeks to correct. Directed by Peter Bratt, brother of Benjamin, and produced by music icon Carlos Santana, “Dolores” gives this unsung human rights heroine the due she deserves with a plethora of clips of her championing the rights of the poorest of the poor from her beginnings in 1959 until her unceremonious exit 40 years later from the union she and Chavez cofounded -- the United Farm Workers of America.

In between, her activism often spread beyond the California grape and lettuce fields to include feminism, racial equality and public health issues related to the rampant use of lethal pesticides on America’s produce. And the clips Bratt has assembled, along with the interviews he’s scored with the likes of Steinem and Angela Davis, provide a vivid biography of a life fully lived, albeit at a cost. Yes, Huerta’s vigor and fight in leading rallies, organizing boycotts and standing up to her sexist peers at the UFWA are inspiring. But the part of the film that’s most affecting is when Bratt turns his camera on Huerta’s 11 children, all of whom took a backseat to a mother who was almost always absent. Hearing them speak of the “scars” she left is wrenching to hear, but then you learn how in their later years she went from just a mother to an inspiration that led all 11 kids into community service.

And how cool is it to have a mother who counted the likes of Bobby Kennedy and Coretta Scott King as her friends and the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan among her staunchest enemies? You might even say she made a career out of ticking off Republicans. Even now, at the grand-old age of 87, pundits such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are still on the attack. And legislatures in Texas and Arizona are passing laws to keep her name out of school textbooks.

Given all that vitriol, you’d think she’d be sprouting horns. But “Dolores” lets us see her as she really is, a sweet but proud grandmother with a Teflon exterior that deflects any criticism hurled her way. Yet, you can’t help but feel for her knowing that the abuse and exploitation of Mexican immigrants is as alive now (see DACA) as it was when she began her fight for human rights nearly 60 years ago. Equally, “Dolores” riles your ire when you see how racism wasn’t nearly the enemy sexism was in her colorful life. Even her own compatriots in the union - all of them male - dismissed her, hitting her with the double slight of downplaying her role as cofounder of the UFWA and then passing her over as a replacement for Chavez after his sudden death in 1993.

Hardly the treatment you’d expect for a woman who nearly died when a San Francisco cop repeatedly jabbed her with a club during a protest outside a campaign event for Bush 41 in 1988. The incident left her bedridden for months, but like everything in her life, Huerta looks upon the act as a catalyst for her to reconnect with her children, who sat diligently by her side during her long convalescence. How she grew such a tough hide is the one thing Bratt might have missed in an otherwise inspiring and enlightening profile of the woman who coined the now famous slogan, “yes we can.” And what better way to end her story than showing Huerta receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the man who sheepishly admits to copping her iconic phrase – Barack Obama?